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| HER WORLD | Sunday, September 9, 2001, Chandigarh, India |
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Formidable Fiorina
A dash of Punjab in
Paris READERS’ RESPONSE
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But father, why did you cry? Kuldip Dhiman retells the true story of a lovely little girl who suddenly discovers an unpleasant secret about her life that would haunt her forever. IT
was my 10th birthday, and my family were celebrating it with usual fervour. My parents, my two elder sisters, and my brother were all busy decorating the house with balloons, ribbons and other festoons. I wore a lovely yellow frilled skirt, a gift from my family. Everyone said I looked like an angel. At about six in the evening, my school friends started to arrive. And as usual, they brought lovely little gifts for me, although I had told them not to bring anything except cards. But did they ever listen to me? I was having such a wonderful time, but little did I know that soon things were going to change forever. Being the youngest child in the family, I was everybody's favourite, especially my father's. And although I loved my sisters , brother, and my mother, I literally adored my father. In fact, in my opinion, he was the best father in the world. He, too, was proud of me, proud of my being a bold girl, proud of my school record. "She is actually my son," he would often say. Being the object of attention of the entire family, I often took things for granted. I fought with my sisters and brother, and it is they who had to "surrender" in the end, even if I was in the wrong. Life was wonderful, but how long does it take for dreams to shatter? That fateful evening, as I was unwrapping the gifts along with my friends, I overheard something that some of my aunts were saying. "Nikki's is such a lovely child," said one of them. Since they were sitting within hearing distance, and as they were praising me, I could not resist the temptation of overhearing them. They went on for a while about how well my parents had brought up their children, and how they adored all of us, especially me. Then one of the aunts said something that stunned me. "Yes, Satinder (that's my father) adores her. O! How much he loves her, and yet this is the same man who had cried when she was born. He did not even go to the hospital for two days." "I have heard about it, but is it true?" asked my younger aunt. "Of course. He also cried when the first two daughters were born. They never celebrated the girls' birthdays until a son was born. The fourth child was unwanted, but since it was too late to do anything about it, he wanted it to be a boy." I froze where I sat. A feeling of numbness took possession of my entire person. I sat motionless for what appeared to be an eternity. My friends were speaking with me, but I could hardly respond. Suddenly everything appeared to have changed. Father had cried when I was born! I just couldn't believe it. How could that be? There he was, right in front of me, greeting guests, playing with my friends, joking with them. Then I heard him say, "Where is my Nikki? Ah, there she is. Nikki betey . . ." He came up to me and picked me up. "My birthday baby. Why is my angel so quiet? Has some one upset you? How dare any one upset my lovely angel," he said in a mock angry voice and showered kisses on me. I looked at my father and said to myself. "No, it is not true, my aunt is lying. But why would she?" Then the party began, and we started playing all sorts of party games. Don't ask me how I managed to maintain a smiling face that evening. When they cut the cake, and offered other cookies, I hardly had any appetite left. That was one day, when I wanted all the guests to leave. But the party went on and on, late into the night. Father, ever sensitive, did notice that something wrong with me. He sat next to me and tried to humour me as only he could. I did manage a smile as he hugged me. "Oh, my Nikki is 10 today. She is a big girl now." How right he was. That day the child in me died forever. At last the party was over. Everyone was tired and soon retired to bed. But that night, I kept rolling and turning in my bed. Tears that I had been holding back began to roll down my cheeks. As I cried, I looked at my father who was sleeping blissfully. I wanted to shake him up and ask, "But father, why did you cry when I was born?" But I didn't. I kept crying and many hours later sleep overcame me. When I awoke the next morning, I found myself in my father's arms. He stroked my hair as usual, said nice things to me. But I knew, the world had changed for me. Later I pressed my mother to tell me the truth. After a while she admitted that father had cried; that he had not gone to the hospital to see her; that he had not spoken to her for weeks after I was born. I thought about my poor mother. Did the poor woman have any choice in getting pregnant, or in choosing the gender of her child? How she must have spent those long days and nights in hospital all alone, feeling guilty about producing a third daughter. "Mother," I cried, "you should have gone for an abortion." My mother hugged me." Don't say such things Nikki, don't we love you now. Does not father adore you? You must forgive him. Often men behave like that because of societal pressure." But no amount of reassurance helped me. Not only did I feel guilty about coming into this world, I also felt guilty for having hurt my father by being born. I did forgive my father, but I never actually forgot. Whenever he said, "My Nikki, is my son," I thought, after all he wanted a boy. You do manage to get over life's shocks, sooner or later. As time passed, I appeared to be as normal as possible. Father loved me as usual, although he guessed I had become a little quite. He took that to be the result of the process of growing up. How wrong the closest to you could be. You might say, I was making too much of a trifle. Newborn girls are often unwelcome in Indian families, so why was I being so emotional about it. I don't know how other girls take it, but I just could never reconcile to the fact that my arrival in this world was unwelcome. Yes, once I was born, I was a privileged child, and was smothered with love, but that did not change the fact that I was unwanted in the first place.. Time is a great healer they say, and I began to come to terms with life. I sailed through school, and did well at college, but I could never get over the feeling of hollowness in me. The fire inside me had gone out. As a child, I often dreamt of becoming an astronaught, or a nuclear scientist. But I did nothing like that, and got married like millions of other girls. When I left home, on the wedding day, you should have seen the way father cried. There was a blank look in his eyes as he managed to say, "Nikki, you are finally leaving me . . . . ." he could not say anything more. As I looked back through the car window, I saw him standing among other guests, helpless and alone. When I came home after a couple of months, I knew father had finally begun to age. He actually never get over my absence. Last week, I got a call saying that father had suffered a massive heart attack. He was in the ICU for three days, and then moved to a special ward. Mother, sisters and my brother and some of my nieces and nephews were there by his side. Father was so happy to see all of us. He looked at me and smiled, "Nikki, beta . . . ." I moved closer to him, and he held my hand. "It is the journey's end my child. Forgive me if I ever wronged you or any of the other children." Then tears rolled down his majestic face. "I hope I never failed any of you." "No father, you never failed any of us, you are the best father in the world," I managed to say holding back my tears. As we all cried, I wanted to ask him something more, but could never muster enough courage. Well, it is too late now to ask him anything, because that very night he died in his sleep, leaving a bigger void in my life. |
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Formidable Fiorina THE lady who came at the top of a the biggest deal in a jaded IT market, Carleton S. (Carly) Fiorina (pronounced Fee-OR-ee-na), has a number of firsts to her credit, the least of all being the first woman to become the CEO of one of America’s top 20 companies. Fiorina, who masterminded the mega-merger of high-tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co and its rival Compaq Computer Corp, which the former bought for about $25 billion, is one of the most written-about women in American business, but then, this is a success story that inspires such attention. Born Cara Carleton Sneed on September 6, 1954, in Austin, Texas, USA, Carly’s father Joseph T. Sneed is a federal court judge and former law professor. Her mother Madelon, who died in December 1998, was an artist. Fiorina’s father’s career as a law professor took him to various places and she attended high schools in Ghana, England, North Carolina and California. She graduated from Stanford University in 1976, where she majored in philosophy and medieval history. She dropped-out of law school but went on studying and holds a Master’s degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, MD, USA, and a Master of Science degree from Sloan School of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She once worked as a shipping clerk at the company she is now the Chairman, CEO and President of. In between these, she managed to teach English in Bologna, Italy, and do a series of not-so-fast-track jobs, including that of a receptionist at a real-estate investment brokerage firm near HP’s headquarters. She worked for 20 years at the US telecom giant AT&T, where she became the CEO of Lucent, the technology firm that AT&T spun off in 1996. Fiorina was divorced after a brief marriage in her early 20s. She married Frank Fiorina, now a retired AT&T Vice-President, in 1985. His daughters from a previous marriage were eight and 12 at that time. A lark, Fiorina gets up as early as 4 am to work out, water her plants and feed wild birds. “It is good thinking time,” she told Business Week. A weekend excursion on The Alchemy, a 52-foot boat with sleeping quarters, is a favourite family activity. When Fiorina was selected to take over as the CEO of HP, the four qualities that were being sought were “the ability to conceptualise and communicate sweeping strategies, the operations- savvy to deliver on quarterly financial goals, the power to bring urgency to an organisation, and the management skills to drive a nascent Net vision throughout the company.” The committee looked at 300 potential candidates and chose her, though one of the four in the final list was another woman, Ann Livermore, now president of HP Services, according to various reports. Fiorina became President and CEO of HP on July 17, 1999, and is credited with refocusing the business from manufacturing individual products towards marketing integrated services, especially e-business solutions, and innovations such as pay-per-use computing. Yet, it has not been plain sailing for this CEO. A cover story in the influential Business Week in February this year maintained that Fiorina was “gambling with Silicon Valley’s proudest legacy.” And this was before she unveiled an 89 per cent profits slump and a swathe of job losses, leading to calls for her resignation. She was a made to give back $6,25,000 of her compensation package for the year, as the targets set for earnings had not been reached. Not that it was too much of a loss; she still made $ 2 million. The deal that resulted in an $87 billion merged company she heads, has definitely pushed her fortunes high, though it remains to be seen if she will be able to buck the generally negative trend that bedevils IT industries worldwide. Fiorina’s speech at the Progress and Freedom Foundation Summit, a technology policy gathering in Aspen, Colorado, on August 19 is reminiscent of the kind of “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” speech that President Franklin D. Roosevelt made post-Depression. She said: “We are entering a second and extraordinarily powerful renaissance. A renaissance that has the capacity and promise to eclipse the achievements of the Italian Renaissance. “The events that forced the close of the Renaissance era were caused by fear. Fear of the openness created by the birth of humanistic values. Fear of the discoveries, customs and peoples found beyond known borders. Fear of the huge ethical questions raised by the times. Leaders were unable to manage the conflicting forces. And it was ultimately fear that sent mankind into retreat, back to parochial thinking. “As a collective, mankind decided that rather than go forward, it would settle for standing still, or going backward. “We are at an equally critical crossroads in time. And not just because the euphoria of the first wave of the Internet has been quelled, or because the dot-com economy has lost its footing, or because the economic flu that’s making its way around the world greatly clouds our ability to predict — let alone capitalise on the future. “I draw on this parallel, this fact of human nature, because on so many issues, we now have a decision to make: * To settle for standing still, or worse, retreating; or * To go forward — boldly. “At this very moment in time, like humankind 500 years ago, we can either choose to move forward, or settle for retreating backward.” She has taken the lead in moving forward, boldly. The lady doth spake... |
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A dash of Punjab in
Paris How well do the women from the Indian community integrate and jell with the Parisians? Understandably, there are contrasting levels. For the diplomatic corps, there are two forums — the International Wives Club (IWC), whose membership is restricted to the wives of the defence attaches and deputies of Navy, Air Force and Army posted in all the embassies. For the ‘hard core’ diplomats, there is the exclusive Bienvenue en France, literally meaning, “Welcome to France”. The IWC has Madam Pam Reeders as its President, while the latter has Madame Marie Hennekinne as its President. Besides all these essentials and domestic work, there is also entertainment, sight-seeing, get-togethers at friends’ place. The women are made familiar with key places: Churches, gardens parks, museums, monuments, shopping arcades, eating joints, jewellery and souvenir shops etc. In ways more than one, these women organisations jell well. A diplomat’s wife has an absorbing life, because it is an uncharted course for her. She has to adjust to unscheduled parties, either attend or host them. Another demanding requirement is to have to make their presence felt at formal functions—often at short notices. They feel proud of their traditional dress as well as of the ability to meet the gastronomic tastes of people of other nationalities by offering them their own country’s cuisines. “Independently, as well as by the hubby’s side, we have to learn the art of conducting ourselves in style”, sighed Anita, who is invariably in or out of one or the other party circuit. |
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READERS’ RESPONSE APROPOS of the article, “Women in
politics: The impact is evident” by Vimla Patil, men have ruled the world for a long-time, and they have brought India to the precipice of nepotism and corruption. They have made a show of honesty and concealed their desire for plunder. An important cause for this deterioration is that women have not come forward to contribute towards the resurgent India. Now that the women have come forward to pick up the gauntlet by demanding 33 per cent representation in Parliament, there appears to be a silver living in India’s socio-economic firmament. These days, women’s participation in Gram Panchayats, Panchayat Samitis, Zila Parishads and Nagar Parishads has actually started a process of resurgence in the country. At a despondent moment, before the Russian Revolution, Lenin once said: “There are many people, but no men”. Women like Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Aruna Asaf Ali and Kamla Devi Chattopadhyaya played their role in the part and now women like Najma Heptulla, Sushma Swaraj, Mamata Banerjee, Sonia Gandhi and others can contribute and play their role. They can carry with them the sunshine, southern and northern wind and the breath of flowers. HANS RAJ JAIN,
Moga II Quotas can empower women only when the democratic process is genuinely democratic. This would mean giving every individual access to education and public organisations and an assurance of speedy justice. In their absence, democracy functions under the garb of oligarchy where a few individuals belonging to well-connected families secure the benefit from public office. In the existing scenario, demands for due representation of women in Parliament and state legislatures seem more like a hunt for posts rather than empowerment. Most famous women politicians in India have inherited political offices and that also in the absence of a comparable male figure. With some notable exceptions such as Mamata Banerjee, most hail from privileged backgrounds and enjoy power by virtue of birth or marriage. If genuine representation is the intention, then it should start from the grassroots, giving equal opportunities to all. With a political culture that continues to be oligarchic, most women politicians see themselves as a stop-gap arrangement until a male reletive is ready to assume political reins. Though India was the second Asian country to have a woman head of government, that did not lead to gender equality and empowerment. Indira Gandhi who was Prime Minister for 17 years, did very little towards improving women’s lot. Women’s representation during her tenure continued to be less than 10 per cent. She frequently talked of women’s primary duties as that of a mother. An interesting dimension is that though the electorate consists of 50 per cent or more of women, they do not automatically support women candidates. The reason is that political parties hardly field women who have independent work and achievement to their credit. In recent times, women legislators haven’t made any impression or initiated any significant legislation concerning their gender. The role of women in electoral politics in recent decades differs sharply from the active and purposeful role they played during the nationalist movement and in the immediate aftermath of Independence. Merely reserving seats will not be enough unless there is a change in the political culture and socialisation process of men and women. Women cannot hope for equality, self-esteem and independence unless they have a decisive role in the power structure within their society. K.M. VASHISHT,
Mansa III Women in a country like ours can’t get anything without struggle. The quest of women to get their deserving 33 per cent share in the political field is a live example of
discrimination. Demands made by women have already been accepted and implemented in the case of local bodies, but the proposal is still hanging at the level of state and national level legislative bodies. It is being said that women should be given equal status, but this is possible only if they get powers to control their destiny. “Men have already made a mess of the world. Let them quit the field and make way for women”, is what a woman member of the Lok Sabha said one day during a discussion on the Women’s Reservation Bill. There are many people in our country who oppose the idea of women’s empowerment. They say that family life in the country would be totally upset if women are called upon to work in such large numbers. Some people express the fear that if women are given 33 per cent seats through reservation, they may grab another 33 per cent seats in the open competition through their merit. The legislative bodies in that case, would become heavily loaded in favour of the fair sex only. As the writer says, it is a wonderful sight where a woman leader hoists national flag on Republic Day or Independence Day. But: “Are the egoistic men of our country capable of tolerating the sight where a woman (whom they have always treated as their dasi (servant)) is hoisting a national flag in front of their eyes?” The answer is certainly, no. At that moment, even if men show themselves to be happy, at the same time they will be grudging in their hearts against that particular woman. Men and women are both complementary to each other just like the two wheels of a vehicle. Then, why are men opposed to giving women their deserving 33 per cent seats? It is nothing else but ego and pride of men which stops them from granting women their rights. Men fear that they will lag behind if women are given political rights. Women don’t need the crutch of reservation to move ahead in their life. They have guts to achieve what they want. It must be kept in mind that no country that does not respect the rights of women can hope to prosper. SUMIT SABHARWAL,
Hoshiarpur |
But father, why did you cry?
Exclusive to Indian ladies, is the Indian Women’s Association with Shashi Puri as its president. Yet interaction with a cross-section of women revealed, the members of these organisations work smoothly and coordinate with each other. Paris has 250 Indian families and 135-odd restaurants run by Indians. The philosophy of these organisations is simple: While husbands get busy and are buried in office and official work, it is left to their wives to find their way in an alien place. They need to know what is where and find out where they should buy grocery where to look for Le Marches (local market for fruits and vegetables)? These women associations have about 200 volunteers who enable these ‘sisters-in-need’ to pick up French vocabulary, learn map-reading and arrange admission of children into schools. They also show them where to get monthly ‘Metro’ tickets and identify the right-direction train or bus, locate hospitals, understand operation of codes and keys in and out of apartments, how to use credit cards and coins for telephone calls or how a post-office works etc.
“Bienvenue believes”, explained Anita Cheema, “wives are the ones who have to work out everyday details of requirements not only their own but also of the family. While husbands adhere to a schedule, a job and colleagues, the path for the family is mapped out by the wives and in that they are helped by these organisations. This helps the women to discover the city that excites
them, even though they miss the home that they have left behind”. Bienvenue also enables wives to set up a home away from home. It organises excursions in and around Paris and absorbs them in hobbies, added Shashi, who is fluent in French and and has been in Paris for 30 years now.